Health and Human Services on Obamacare Glitches: 'We're Proud of These Quick Improvements'

On Sunday, the Department of Health and Human Services website posted a message bragging of its progress in fixing the glitches in the Obamacare exchange website.

“Over the past two and a half weeks, millions of Americans visited HealthCare.gov to look at their new health care options under the Affordable Care Act. In that time, nearly half a million applications for coverage have been submitted from across the nation. This tremendous interest – with over 19 million unique visits to date to HealthCare.gov- confirms that the American people are looking for quality, affordable health coverage, and want to find it online,” the HHS website states. “Unfortunately, the experience on HealthCare.gov has been frustrating for many Americans. Some have had trouble creating accounts and logging in to the site, while others have received confusing error messages, or had to wait for slow page loads or forms that failed to respond in a timely fashion. The initial consumer experience of HealthCare.gov has not lived up to the expectations of the American people. We are committed to doing better.”

But never fear, says the HHS: things are already improving. “Aside from the difficulties since launching the site, there are parts of the overall system that have proved up to the task.”

HHS said it was “working around the clock to make improvements,” including adding new code to fix bugs “that have greatly improved the HealthCare.gov experience.” HHS added, “We’re proud of these quick improvements, but we know there’s still more work to be done. We will continue to conduct regular maintenance nearly every night to improve the experience.”

HHS said that it had called in “additional help” to deal with the glitches, summoning aid from “both inside and outside government to scrub in with the team and help improve HealthCare.gov. We’re also putting in place tools and processes to aggressively monitor and identify parts of HealthCare.gov where individuals are encountering errors or having difficulty using the site, so we can prioritize and fix them.”

Finally, HHS asked for success stories: “If you have any comments, either complimentary or critical, please let us know by sharing your feedback at https://www.healthcare.gov/connect/. We’ve already heard so many stories of individuals getting health insurance for the first time, and we are dedicated to making that possible for all Americans.”